Update. For some reason I've not been able to log in on here for nearly 3 months - I type my post and get logged out straight away.
Kia's steering pipe was at fault. Rusted completely through.
- A rusted pipe
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New one was well over £200 from the local Kia dealer, and of course I couldn't buy just the section which had rusted through. It was an odd size (9mm) and could only find 8 or 10mm pipe fittings with ease; stepdaughter needed the car daily and because of her odd work and uni hours was stranded in Selsey reliant on dickhead boyfriend taking her places because no public transport when needed.
It was replaced by this, which was £80 ish from Pirtek. Not the cheapest but I could get it made overnight.
- A hydraulic pipe
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It was a swine to fit, and while it does the job it can't mould nicely to the route of the old metal pipe. I was hoping they'd just splice into the rotten bit but they made a long Flexi piece replacing the rotten bit and the lower Flexi. I'm not happy with the routing as it passes very close to the alternator and exhaust manifold, but is secure enough for now and hasn't shown any signs of abrasion or heat damage, so until I can find some appropriate pipe clips it will have to do.
- Automotive porridge.
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Good news is you can't see the terrible job I did once it's all buttoned up. It's quite a decent little car this, about 115bhp from a 1.5 Diesel but has typical 90s-00s Japanese/Korean predictably stodgy handling. It's a lot more economical than the mini was.
Meanwhile on the C2 I replaced its ridiculous induction system.
- A little Citroen fitted with a stupid air filter
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and fitted a second hand standard airbox.
- A little Citroen now fitted with a standard air filter.
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If it was a get up and go C2 I'd have made a better attempt at fitting a cone filter, but this was some 50p eBay special, held in place quite loosely with cable ties so it slopped about like a turd in a piss-pot. It's a 1.1 with a whopping 60bhp, and now it's like this:
- A little Citroen now fitted with a standard air filter.
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It runs nicer, it doesn't sound like the Max Power boys are in town and returns better fuel consumption.
Next few jobs are to service all 3 cars - I won a complete filters and plugs kit for the C2 on eBay for £7 - and do the MoT jobs on the Kia. It had advisories for perished rubber boots on all the drop links and bottom ball joints, so I'll change them entirely, they're cheap enough.